Q: "Are you for real? This is just you mocking the people on Navy Pier, right?"

A: Wrong. I will be one of the people on Navy Pier. I am mocking somebody, but it's not us. I'm mocking the sort of people who look at the unearned privileges they enjoy in their lives, and see in them a measure of their own personal worth. Speaking as a poor person, myself, I find that I am more than marginalised. People expect us to be altogether invisible, most of the time, unless we should happen to belong to some officially designated oppressed group or another, spending the few moments in the sun that we are graciously granted down on bended knee, asking the world's forgiveness for being the way we are. The word "loser" gets used a lot, when we are spoken of, by people who insist of believing that to be poor, one has to a lazy person who dropped out of school, got into substance abuse and criminal activity, and made one's own problems - expecting the poor person to agree with this, "because that's what I believe, and are you saying that my beliefs aren't valid?"

That's garbage, and yes, if that's how you see poor people, I'm saying that your beliefs aren't valid. I ran into my own personal difficulty, some years back when I began my job search with a high dean's list average from a top 20 school with all but the dissertation for a PhD in Mathematics, having worked my way through school doing a work week that, while officially was 18 hours long, in reality never dropped below 40 hours - before studies - and was usually 60 hours, for which I was paid a lordly sum that topped out at $6000 per year before my job evaporated, and I had to go out into the world looking for alternative employment. I never found it, even after applying to over 40,000 potential employers, the vast majority of whom never replied. So much for any charge of laziness. What had happened was that I ran into a management fad of refusing to hire anybody for any position until he had 2-5 years of relevant work experience, leaving the question unanswered of how somebody was supposed to get his first job on those terms. "That's your problem".

Some years later, some of the suits who came up with that brilliant notion discovered that they now had a shortage of junior professionals - what a surprise. So the fad went away, at least temporarily, but the stubborn insistence on not hiring the long term unemployed did not. "Why have you been out of work for so long?" "Because of your previous management fad?" "Son, we can't hire somebody who blames others for his problems" ... and don't ask us to trouble ourselves with minor issues like reality. Many other people can tell you similar stories, or stories as bad, in absolute truthfulness. This is the reality of which we are told that we dare not speak - that very often the poor are no more than those who were arbitrarily discarded, kicked to the curb for no reason at all.

Expecting us to apologise to humanity for the fact that we got mistreated is a bit much. I won't say "let's be proud of our poverty"; given a real, honest chance to escape from below the poverty line, I'd take it, and I would expect anybody else to do the same. What I will say is that the time has long since come for us to stop letting that poverty and people's bad attitudes toward it define our lives and how we view them. To respond to some of those attitudes with a little mockery is a healthy response, and if somebody wishes to call us "losers", let us embrace and subvert the term.

I'm picturing gatherings of self-identified "losers" going out and doing something truly revolutionary, as they dare to have a good time and make a few friends among their fellow "losers". Where is it written that the having of a good time must, by definition, involve massive conspicuous consumption and the outlay of a large amount of cash? Let's just be who we are, and make use of what we have, and if we manage to have a sense of humor about the absurdity of our situation, so much the better for us.





Q: "So, what ... we're just going to gather to complain about the job situation?"

A: If you want to do that, you're free to do so. I don't own the pier, so I'm not going to be throwing you off of it. But don't expect me to sit around and listen if you're going to spend all night doing that. Life is unfair. We know. Let's move on.

The Oliver Twist reference you see in the announcement is more of what this is going to be about.





Q: How many people do you expect to see come?

A: To be realistic - probably just me, and maybe one curious visitor, who will end up edging away uncomfortably, because I tend to be seriously mousy around people I don't know. Assuming that said person even finds me, given that the pier will be packed.





Q: If somebody does want to take part in this, how do they find you?

A: NOT by using one of the Bravenet mailforms one might see on one of my old pages. The spambots got to those years ago, and so I'm slowly taking them down.

What one does is sign up for this flickgroup and sending me a message. Giving me a link to some sort of photo of yourself, so I'll recognise you, is probably a good idea. If anybody decides to take part in this, I'll be amazed we'll be meeting inside at 10 pm, because waiting outside in the cold isn't fun. I'll wait around for maybe 15 minutes, to see if anybody is coming, and then head out.





Q: "Are we going to be breaking any laws? You said something about security ..."

A: No, no laws broken. Probably some sarcasm to be encountered along the way, but then you already knew that.





Q: "I'm doing a project for my journalism class, and I was wondering if you'd ..."

A: Don't put us on display. Or me, as the case may be. Please don't. Rich people can go out and goof around a little without getting that kind of attention, so why shouldn't poor people be able to do the same? No cameras, no interviews, just let us be ourselves, however many people that may be. Or not be.

Does that answer everything? If not, and you have a Yahoo account, you know how to get in touch with me. If you don't have a Yahoo account, why not? They're free, you know, and how did you manage to find that event annoucement on Upcoming?





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